Three little words.
There was an episode, one of my favorite moments in Star Trek, when Captain Kirk looks over the cosmos and says, “Somewhere out there someone is saying the three most beautiful words in any language.” Of course you heart sinks and you think it’s going to be, “I love you” or whatever. He says, “Please help me.” What a philosophically fantastic idea, that vulnerability and need is a beautiful thing.
EDITH
And you don’t want to talk about it? Why? Did you do something wrong? Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.KIRK
“Let me help.” A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.
—The City on the Edge of Forever
The difference between “please, help me” and “let me help” is fairly dramatic. In Fry’s mismemory, Kirk seems almost to ghoulishly relish this cry for salvation, this opportunity to exercise his own benevolent power over someone in peril. In the actual quote, Kirk cites a novel we’ve not yet read, and the phrase itself is not a ventriloquised cry of need but a personal offer to serve.
KIRK
Why do you say that?EDITH
Sometimes you seem, well, disoriented, Jim, like a man just in from the country.KIRK
Iowa?EDITH
Further away than that.KIRK
“When night begins to fall, all men become strangers…”EDITH
It’s true. Who said it, I don’t recognize it.KIRK
Wellman 9. An obscure poet. Someday people will call his work the most beautiful ever known in the galaxy.EDITH
That’s a lot of territory.
